The Bruce Peninsula Multisport Race raised over $7,500 for outdoor sport projects on the Bruce.

The event also drew hundreds of people to Bluewater Park, and hundreds more to their computers.  The weather was close to perfect, the participants were thrilled with the course, and the only casualty was a broken bike chain. 

"We would like to give a sincere thank you to all 110 volunteers, 46 sponsors, 119 athletes, 31 kids, 60 landowners and 15 committee members,” says co-race director Leigh Grigg. “We'd also like to encourage everyone, especially the volunteers to share their stories from the day with us at admin@griggsport.com  We ask this because the event was so big, not one person witnessed the entire thing!  As a footnote, we will be ordering a few more custom Buffs for the volunteers that didn't receive one. We had such a spike in the number of volunteers in the last week of planning, we ran short." 

The race organizing committee was comprised of Jack Van Dorp, Leigh & Megan Grigg, Tobin Day, Muffy & Zane Davies, Carlin Val, Debbie Ray, Karen Neerhof, Nelvia Van Dorp, Deborah Deibel, Jess Urbshott, Adam Belanger, Allisa Slumskie and Jaime Balsom. 

“To all the volunteers and race partners, a round of well deserved applause,” continues Grigg. “ We accomplished all of our goals, bringing sport tourism to the area, getting the local residents out and active, and shining a light on our local star athletes.  About 50% of the participants were from Grey-Bruce, and 10% from the Wiarton area.“  

One such athlete was Martina (Rose) Nadjiwan, who trained for the event all summer long, including at the Bruce Peninsula Multisport Race’s - Kids Triathlon Clinic on July 1st. Nadjiwant ended up winning the 11-13 yr. old girls' division, and made a point to high-five the other athletes as they crossed behind her. 

Other success stories involved the generosity of the event’s volunteers.  At 5 a.m., a volunteer named Richard discovered a long course racer had left behind his mandatory bike helmet in Wiarton and drove it up the peninsula to hand it off to the racer, just in time for the starting gun. 

A Colpoy's Bay couple fed and catered to the transition area volunteers all day, and an impromptu volunteer named Molly stepped in to fill a vacant marshal role.  Volunteer transport people worked all day loading and unloading kayaks and bikes.  The sweeps had a bonus helper in Christine Lundvall, after the participant's bicycle derailer broke. Sweeping committee members Muffy, Carlin, Zane along with volunteer Jason Angus and the aforementioned racer traveled the entire long course to ensure nobody was left behind. 

"We consider the event a great success," enthused co-race director and course designer Jack Van Dorp, "and also want to express our gratitude to all of the landowners who gave us permission to cross their property during the event." 

In the Northern Confections Kids Race, volunteers Andrew Wark and Aren Clemmer stood out in their leadership skills, being involved in the race planning from March onwards. They were part of the ECO-shores class that put it together, and then came out on a summer Saturday to help hands-on. Steven Nadjiwan was a volunteer "rabbit" for the kids race only hours after finishing in the top 10 short course racers at an incredible 15 years of age. Teacher Tobin Day played the key role in making the event a race-day success. 

There was a lot of online buzz generated by the event.  The “live site” page at www.griggsport.com/bruce drew close to a thousand hits over the weekend with video and photo content from the race, uploaded live as the race progressed.

Organizers are already hard at work identifying ways to make next year's event an even greater success